Portland Carfree Day
...multi-modal, public-space-reclaiming fun

Here’s the email from Elly:

Well, everyone,
Congratulations to us! Some pizza and early-planning are in order pretty soon. This is going to be really, really fun.

In the meantime, it would be good to get a headcount of who on this list is still interested in being involved in conference planning, and in what way, great or small. Drop me a line about this when you can.
Cheers,
Elly

The letter of acceptance follows…

Hello everyone,

As I’m the network’s conference coordinator and also a member of its steering committee, I’ve been delegated to report to you that Portland, Oregon, USA has been selected as the host for Towards Carfree Cities VIII in 2008.

The steering committee would like to thank both the Portland and the San Luis Potosi teams for their proposals and for their cooperation throughout this process. Thanks also to everyone who submitted their thoughts and questions.

The steering committee discussed both proposals in depth throughout the past months, listened to your comments, asked additional questions of the two aspiring hosts, and chose a point-based decision-making process (which ended up affirming the previous sentiment of the group). Eight questions were determined to be the most important, and each steering committee member gave each proposal 1-10 points in each of the eight categories. Portland came out ahead not just in the total (558 to 472) but also in the total votes in each of the eight categories, as you can see below.

Total score for SLP: 470
Total score for Portland: 558

Total votes: 9 (Justin, Milan, Ton, Susanna, Carlos, Giselle, Randy, Gabrielle, Markus)
Missing votes: 2 (Rajendra - inactive steering committee member; and Sara, not voting due to conflict of interest)

The eight categories with total votes (with 90 being the highest possible score for each):

1. What could we learn from the host city? Would the examples be replicable in other parts of the world?
(SLP 54, PL 72)
2. Strength of host organisation. Potential for broad range of local partners.
(SLP 63, PL 78)
3. Accessibility. Will network members be able afford the time and expense to travel to the host city?
(SLP 53, PL 60)
4. Political context. Will there be local support for a Towards Carfree Cities Conference?
(SLP 65, PL 75)
5. Influence on world stage? Will the location attract attention from the press?
(SLP 54, PL 76)
6. Ability to inspire. Will the ambiance of the city give the visitor positive examples of public space not dominated by motorised traffic?
(SLP 58, PL 69)
7. Which city would draw the most participants? Where would you prefer to go?
(SLP 70, PL 72)
8. What would the conference do that’s new, interesting or different compared to past conferences? Is there some idea or purpose that ties the proposal together? (is there a conference concept or theme?)
(SLP 53, PL 56)

Factors in favour of Portland included:
a) the perception that more participants would attend there
b) that it’s a good idea to hold a conference in the USA, as the network’s support is mainly divided between Europe and USA/Canada and we’ve never had a conference there
c) that it’s a good idea to hold a conference in the USA because of that country’s influence on the world stage
d) that Portland is a very dynamic city with a lot of inspiration and support to offer the conference, and in addition the ideas of the conference have a high probability of being applied there
e) the perception that there were more positive examples in Portland to highlight and build on
f) it would be easier for Canadians to attend
g) the diversity and dynamism of the partner organisations, whereas the SLP partners were largely at the official and technical level
g) the conference was held in Latin America in 2006
h) the ease of communication in English between Prague and the host city
i) Sara Stout is on the organising committee, and Brian Smith has offered to take a few months off to help organise the conference

Additional comment from Justin: I also found Agustin’s comments about a biketrip quite interesting. Hopefully we can talk a bit about inclusion of the two cities, once we have announced the results.

I think Justin’s sentiment represents the whole steering committee, in that we’d encourage the San Luis Potosi team to organise a national or regional project/event that might fit in with or complement the Portland conference, as a network project or otherwise. We’d encourage members of the network and members of this list to give a hand to any such plans that may be developed.

Thanks again to everyone,

Randy

–
Randall Ghent
Membership & Conference Coordinator
WORLD CARFREE NETWORK